The A word (Authenticity)

Is your favourite food authentic? Does your favourite restaurant serve authentic food? Could you be authentic food?

All image credits: Hugo Hay and Long Huỳnh

A curious phenomenon has arisen in Australia — something in the sizzle, something in the lines around the block and between the awkward ums-and-uhs of a declined card. One that’s noticeable every time you eat out: on menus and window signs, in the group chat discussing where to eat, in Google reviews heaping praise and citing faults. It’s in the mouths of the sous, the maître d', the other diners, and maybe even your own.

Authenticity and the notion of true authentic foodways.

The Oxford Dictionary defines authenticity as the property of being genuine, true to origin, legitimate, or consistent with the person or object’s history and typicality. In this semantic sense, discourse on authentic food exclusively entails whether its ingredients are legitimate. Think the horsemeat scandal of 2013 — an authentic beef sandwich is one that contains beef that is really beef and bread that is really bread.

Of course, what people really mean is whether the food they are consuming is accurate to what they would expect to find in its country of origin. As a concept, food authenticity has multiple objectives: one as a marker of a quality ethnic and cultural experience via food and the dining experience, another as a marker for our own willingness and aptitude to experience cultures and food from beyond the one in which we are currently in.

The issue, however, is that attributes used to measure such ‘accuracy’ are often arbitrary, varying across dishes, cuisines, restaurants, chefs, and contexts with no real rationale. Vague and pervasive — the concept’s applicability rolls on a butter wheel across the bread of our culinary experiences.

So what is authenticity? Is your favourite food authentic? Does your favourite restaurant serve authentic food? Could you be authentic food? Why are Australians so obsessed?

Perhaps the cultural arena of modern consumption most occupied with authenticity is food. Australian food adventurers have made it their mission to identify which random combination of characteristics signifies authenticity. Everyone seems to have an intrinsic sense of it, often based on nothing more than “just the vibes.” Take a Chinese restaurant for example, one may expect certain senses to be activated: sights of time-worn menus, smells of fragrant beef sizzles, and feels for a dingy interior. What were once defects have become validating markers of good, real Chinese food.

For some, finding the most authentic versions of the most popular dishes of a culture is the goal. Their search begins and ends at dishes that are synonymous with a country — like sushi for Japan and tacos for Mexico. Others go off course. They challenge themselves to avoid these dishes, instead deriding them as the normie order in search of more niche fares. Saying your favourite Chinese dish is pork tang yuan signifies to the masses that you’ve been through the Chozzie trenches, ascending ranks above the Kung Pao chicken orderers of the world.

At risk of sounding like a culinary centrist, both mindsets are flawed.

The former relies on the propagandistic fallacy of national dishes, which is a relatively new phenomenon for most cultures. Prior to WWII, the main gastronomic concern was getting enough food. In early 20th-century Thailand, Pad Thai was engineered as a governmental effort to galvanise patriotism and export soft culture. The combination of sweet, tangy, savoury, spicy flavours was designed to capture Thai cuisine in a digestible, easily-exportable way… and it worked! Considering how few Thai people regularly consume Pad Thai in the homeland, authenticity with a basis in traditional roots has been, and will be, undermined by ancillary forces.

The latter archetype treats ethnic food as a fun experience akin to an escape room. For a temporary fling, foodies can satisfy their cravings of otherness, where “ethnicity becomes spice” that “liven up the dull dish that is mainstream white society”, as bell hooks put it. Not to imply trying new cultural foods should be discouraged of course; the issue is itself in the search. Authenticity attempts to create a safe space for those who wish to access a cuisine in its ‘truest and realest’ form, for those whose palates are already safest.

In such culinary crises, perhaps you could turn to official bodies and their attempts at regulating formal, undisputable authenticity. The Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana (AVPN) enforces a system to defend the Naples-style pizza. Armed with clicky pens tucked in their apron pocket, the association’s representatives visit pizzerias worldwide to verify if they follow the correct Neapolitan process. A pizza should have a diameter less than 35cm. The cornicione (rim) must be raised, soft, and golden. The dough should only be rolled by hand. It cannot be frozen or vacuum-packed for sale — the rules go on. As of 2023, there are eight AVPN-certified parlours in Sydney and 19 in Australia. So the model of certifiable authenticity exists, but when was the last time you dined at Aperitivo on account of their AVPN status? Just down Norton Street, Bar Italia is venerated for being just as authentic while serving Napoli pizza without a certification. Regulated authenticity remains only a niche interest among diehard purists, so surely this can’t be what the populace means when they say authentic food.

Sometimes what is meant is far more insidious. Beneath the TimeOut-fueled ho-hums about decor and menu exists the lives of people making our food.

In the slow deterioration of the White Australian Policy, food service was a necessary path for many immigrants in search of economic freedom. As more recipes expatriated, onshore consumers developed a fascination for the entwinement of exotic food and exotic cultures. A dish is regarded as most authentic when the connection between food and people — product and producer — are most tangible. In particular, the owner’s presence at the restaurant, or lack thereof, is sought out by diners to convey a sense of homemadeness and a personal attachment to the food served.

The authentic package even includes other employees and the kitchen, who themselves bear cultural meaning on the basis of their race and ethnicity. The expectation that the dish and the chef should be of similar origins is strongly held yet unevenly applied. Palisa Anderson of the Chat Thai dynasty has a Ratatouille-esque ‘a great artist can come from anywhere’ stance: “one doesn’t have to be of Thai origin to master Thai cooking” but she concedes that “being Thai is an advantage.”

This nature vs. nurture debate is thwarted by systems of oppression that ultimately platforms white experts. Seeing a white chef making your Pad Kee Mao at the local bistro might be disconcerting, but what about at Long Chim in the CBD where the Pad Thais are $36? The owner, David Thompson, the most prolific and recognisable authority figure of Thai cuisine in Australia, is a white man. Thompson’s expertise in Thai cuisine is impressive (it better be for $36) but local Thai chefs are seldom given the same opportunities for notoriety. While foreign food is legitimised by foreign cooks, foreign food is “elevated” by white cooks who know how to play the authenticity game.

Outside the ‘staff only’ area, the hunt for authenticity reaches the restaurant floor where even fellow customers must play their prescribed roles. When the tandoori restaurant is frequented by South Asian regulars, that’s when you know it’s really authentic. No longer is ‘where are you really from’ appropriate to ask, but ‘where do you really eat’ is fine and worthy of investigation. The ethnic customer’s supposed knowledge is intrinsic and infinite, but still accessible from outside observations.

We expect the dining experience to be enough of a slice of life of the respective culinary destination, but not too much that we as diners feel foreign.

Such a mindset panini-presses the vast heterogeneity of immigrant-run restaurants, relegating thousands of unique eateries under one outdated stereotype.

Behind the square and stainless-steel veil of the garde manger, a subliminal marker of authenticity is found within the tools and methods involved in the creation of food. When we are questioning authenticity, we might ask if our food has been prepared the same way as it has been traditionally or typically in the region the dish is from. Sometimes, we can taste it — a lo mein prepared in a sauteuse might lack wok-hei; other times we can feel it, the beef in the same lo mein may not be velveted but might still be tender and fatty. 

Authentic preparation methods and tools are mystified by gastronomic hegemony. Chefs and cooks who can prepare food with non-Western methods and crockery are seen as masters of some kind of foreign culinary art. In the back of house, the time-weathed chef who doesn't speak any English, smokes a cigarette with no hands and with foreign tools serves me something with flavours and textures I could not imagine making myself in the way that they do.

Perhaps he velvets his meat with a starch and soda — ingredients I can only intuitively bake with — or maybe he grills my dish in great nướng claws. However, this kind of preparation rarely defines the dish. What if I had prepared a Lo Mein with the traditional egg noodles, prepared beef of the traditional typical cut and variety, and vegetables of the appropriate flavour. I have seasoned it all similarly, but I haven’t used a wok. It would seem absurd to say I have not made Lo Mein, but could it be appropriate to say that the dish I have created is in un-authentic Lo Mein? 

Equally a symptom of orientalism as much as professional admiration, authenticity demands this mystique for the othering of the kitchen space. Authentic food demands the kitchen be othered in two ways: once as a place of work and another as a cultural mine for our stomachs to extract from. 

These cultural mines are of no shortage in Sydney. Pockets of the city have become synonymous with certain cuisines. Chinese in Haymarket; Korean in Strathfield; Indian in Harris Park; McDonalds in Macdonaldtown. Drawing gastro-boundaries for easy mental and intestinal digestion allow Australians to benefit from enjoying the flavours of exotic, while prohibiting it from mixing with, and tainting, white Australia.

These communities, despite accessibility, are rarely engaged with genuinely by other Sydneysiders, especially those in Char-Grill-Charlie's side of the red-rooster line (the gap between the two Sydneys is an age-old tale, only partially unpacked here).

The engagement they do receive is warmed and potentially well-intended but ultimately fetishising. The stock from the grocer may spill onto the street, their patrons might speak a language you wouldn’t expect to hear next door, but this isn’t any different from travelling through the CBD. Though there is extra work going on here, the enclave is still viewed as a slice of country rather than an adjacent community. The enclave remains a place to experience the culture, cuisine and life of somewhere else without having to go, rather than our neighbours worthy of the respect given to English-speaking ones.

No suburb is more emblematic of this phenomenon than Cabramatta.

Here, the smell of fermentation and cigarette smoke float through the halls of the many arcades and plazas; some with developer-Orientalism chic complete with red hip-and-gable roofs, others with more Arial Bold signs than a community notice board, plastered on top of flemish brick. The sounds of grandma trolley wheels and a cocktail of K- and V-pop tunes permeate the air as laboriously handmade staples like nước chấm sit in jars at takeout windows ready to be sold. Northern, central, and southern Viet cuisines sit alongside one another beside the ornate Pai Lau designating the central business district. It’s clear why the suburb is revered for its authentic Viet-ness.

After the Vietnam War, refugees and migrants settled into Cabramatta, Cabramatta West, and Fairfield in Sydney and Richmond, Abbotsford, and Footscray in Melbourne. As they turned to food service, the Vietnamese flavour palate became more accessible and eventually, popular among non-Viet Australians. Bánh mì (initially called pork rolls), vermicelli salads, and Phở became staples for working people and students at lunchtime, eventually expanding into the city and the inner-city. This proliferation normalised Viet cuisine as a part of daily options for Australians but left it ripe for hyper-commercialisation.

By the early 2000s, city suits and career restaurateurs seized the cuisine. Branded as both ground-breaking yet nostalgic, capitalists leaned into stereotypical wartime aesthetics and sold-off Viet classics to the mass public. Roll’d rebranded rice paper rolls as Soldier Rolls™ and industrialised the Bánh Mì as pre-made, pastry-boxed catering slices. Neither are made with the same care or quality as family-run bakeries. Jaded, foodies yearned for richer, crafted flavours of first wave Viet-Australian cuisine and in their search, returned to the old town of Cabra.

Now heralded as the Viet-enjoyer’s must-do day trip, it’s easy to assume this is where true authenticity still thrives — but there are caveats.

At Dong Hoa, a quaint Viet eatery near the end of John Street, chef Lan busies herself frying the perfect Bánh Xèo. Donning a baseball cap over her hair net (just like my aunties in Vietnam), she takes a moment away from the wok to chronicle her culinary history. She first learnt how to cook in Vietnam but underwent retraining after migrating, “wherever I go, I adapt.” Gesturing towards the wall decked out in prints of menu items, she elaborates: “how I make it in Vietnam is different to how I make it here, but it’s all still very Vietnamese.“

Back in Vietnam, restaurants similarly don’t maintain such reverence for authenticity. Often, deliberate attempts are made at innovating recipes from the too-familiar, too-authentic casual bistros that abound the streets. "We want to explore what to add and subtract to traditional recipes to make it our own,” says Thanh, co-owner of Shamballa, a vegetarian restaurant in the heart of Saigon. Sitting beneath a massive exposed brick wall, he explains their aim to meld “imported Western flavours” with Viet classics to bridge a culinary distance: “if we recycle the same recipes, the world will never discover new flavours.”

The search for authenticity demands that dishes are replicated exactly as they were in the motherland at a fixed point in time. Yet, restaurants — both here and there — are constantly evolving, some taking on influences from neighbours, others even developing flavour profiles to appeal to Western tourists (many of whom are Australian!).

The reality is that authenticity is fluid, continuously assessed and reassessed as history, location, and behaviours shift. As food scholar Panikos Panayi writes, “people are misguided to think there is a single authentic version of anything.”

The current system of authenticity is at best, ill-conceived, and at worse, oppressive. So how should we conceive of it instead?

It’s not radical to suggest getting rid of the pursuit entirely. Deeper appreciation of the food we consume can only be possible by assessing it on other qualities. One of which can still be how accurately replicated it is to a certain place and time. But imposing that as a standard no longer serves us any use, other than lending some cultural capital to your friend who boasts their $1 baklava in Fairfield.

Some think it’s too late, the Pavlovian response Australians have on our palates and wallets is too ingrained in gastronomic culture. The same culture that attempts to highlight cultures and cuisines of people outside of the Australian hegemony, but it can only ever serve those within the hegemony. The markers of authenticity are only ever in effort to capture the tastes and textures that define someone else’s food; never the experiences, practices and customs of how it is eaten. As a diner, you only need to worry about respecting someone with your wallet rather than with your actions.

Consumers that value authenticity over other, more important indicators of the properties of food, are engaging in virtue signalling. If it’s true that I am what I eat and I choose to eat authentically — I am trying to demonstrate that I am a respectful and worldly individual and that I care deeply for the community that I am engaging with culinarily. I wish to deny the same cuisine with dishes that may have been modified for an Australian palate and instead demand food cooked in their image, perhaps to demonstrate that I accept them and their food as relative to my own. 

There could be a case made for the pursuit of authenticity as a self-fulfilment exercise, particularly for diasporic and migrant communities looking to find identity in a new home. Yet, the current model of authenticity is not conducive for this. This is an entirely different search altogether. Once the walls of authenticity have fallen, we can rebuild practices to facilitate this longing: food based in community, rather than concepts.

To dismantle these walls, we ought to value the food. The freshness of its ingredients; the complexity of its flavour profile; the way the fat, the skin, and the meat of an hours-braised Hong Shao Rou melt under your teeth and tongue; the way the pungency of mắm tôm interacts with the chewiness of the bún.

We ought to value the restaurant. How it contributes to the surrounding community; if it sponsors a soccer team in the depths of suburbia; if they throw in an entrée for free; or gives away extra food when no one is in.

We ought to value the people behind the food: the creativity and skill of the kitchen hands; the way the chef slips and weaves like a boxer between the flambé and the rangehood; the consistency of your caramelised onions and the cleanliness of your plate — steamed, scrubbed and shining. The way the waiter puts your cutlery down; the attentiveness of the host when you’re grabbing the check; and the way auntie smiles as you leave and as you enter when she remembers your name.

Don’t go hunting for something exactly like somewhere else — you won’t find it. Try to find what's right in front of you — what's been brought from someone else’s table to yours.

And say thank you.